Manning Valley Historical Society

 

Isabella Mary Kelly  

Miss Isabella Mary Kelly (pictured above in the only known photograph of her) sailed into Sydney Harbour on November 17, 1834 , on board the barque James. She said she came because of health reasons.  She was a wealthy woman.  

 

 

Isabella Kelly was born in Dublin, probably between 1802 and 1806.  When she was eight years old she became an orphan.  Her brother took her to London and there, Sir William Crowder, a Justice of the High Court, became her guardian.   

 

 

On August 8, 1838, Kelly attended a Crown Land Sale held at The Treasury in Sydney, purchasing 895 acres of land “near Mt.  Kangat” on the northern bank of the Manning River for £223.  Isabella called her property  “Mount George.”   There has been speculation over the source of the name “George”.  King George IV was long dead.  The first name of Governor Gipps was "George", but a respectful Isabella Kelly would have given it the name of "Mount Gipps" rather than the familiar "Mount George".  The most likely nominee for the honour was George Crowder, the youngest of the Crowder family.

 

 

Isabella Mary Kelly is unique in the history of New South Wales - she was the only single female who was a settler in her own right.  She was entirely without any bond of marriage, nor was there a male companion in her life.  She chose a life as a settler in a remote district of the colony.  While other women may have owned stations, and remained in Sydney, content to relay orders to a male superintendent, Isabella Kelly ran the station herself and was not afraid to get her hands dirty.  

 

 

The stock on Isabella Kelly’s station consisted of horses, cattle, milch cows, sheep and a few pigs.  But her specialty was horses, although society disapproved of women breeding horses.  The Australian Stud Book records Calendar, the most famous of her horses, as foaled in Great Britain in 1834, and the sire of Camden, who won the AJC Homebush St Leger Stakes in 1855.  She was an excellent horsewoman, always riding side-saddle, and not astride the horse as a man would.

 

 

  Isabella Mary Kelly had very ambitious plans for Mount George.  At the eastern end of the Mount George estate, on rather hilly ground, a new township was surveyed, which she called Georgetown.  On March 3, 1842, an auction was held for blocks of land in Georgetown, but unfortunately the auction was a dismal failure – not one block sold.  Probably the main reason for the failure was its isolation. Kelly believed in Georgetown’s future on the basis that Mount George would continue to be on the main route north.  The A. A. Company owned a huge tract of land on the southern bank of the Manning River, which they would not allow travellers to pass through.  There was a shallow crossing of the Manning River at Kelly’s Mount George property, which was popularly used by people travelling up the western boundaries of the A. A. Company’s land.  Even travellers between the two coastal towns of Port Macquarie and Port Stephens would pass through Mount George at that time.

 

 

 Isabella Kelly was greatly disliked by many of her neighbours.  They resented a women who did “men’s work” and often referred to her as “masculine”.  She was known to have a temper.  She would not allow men to stand over her.  

 

 

In 1851, her house - one of the best in the district - was mysteriously burned down while she away on business, with no hint of who was responsible.

 

 

Isabella Kelly was unjustly imprisoned in Darlinghurst Gaol for a crime she did not commit.  She later received £1000 in compensation from the Government.

 

 

Many stories have been published about the “notorious” Isabella Kelly, suggesting she cruelly whipped the convicts in her charge; that she rode around the countryside with guns on hips, and chased bushrangers.  All are completely false. 

 

 

Isabella Kelly finally left the Valley in 1865, after twenty-seven years residence.  She was a female pioneer in her own right who never received the credit she deserved.  

 

 

 

 

The main story of Isabella Mary Kelly began in 1854 when she sub-let the Brimbin property to Charles Skerrett, who turned out to be a con man.  

 

 

It is a story of stolen cattle and forged documents which resulted in Isabella Kelly's wrongful imprisonment in Darlinghurst Gaol

 

 

It is a story of colonial injustice which reached from the lowest rung of the justice ladder, the local untrained Magistrates, to the highest rung, the office of the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.

The Trials of 
Isabella Mary Kelly

by Maurie Garland

Published November 2005

 

"AT LAST ... the truth about the remarkable life of ISABELLA KELLY ... a pioneer of rare quality who deserves recognition."
                        Di Morrissey

 

"In this ably researched study [of Isabella Mary Kelly] based on an insightful exploration and re-examination of forgotten, neglected or overlooked official colonial documents, Maurie Garland has succeeded in piecing together her life and times in real historical terms. 

In doing so he has exposed, for what they are, the distortions and misconceptions of popular myth-making.  ...  The distorting curtain has at last been drawn back and the character of Kelly has been revealed in this well-constructed biographical narrative ...

Maurie Garland's story of her life makes compelling reading from its very beginning to its sad end."

                         John Ramsland
                         Emeritus Professor of History,  
                         The University of Newcastle, NSW.

 

Available from the Manning Valley Historical Society
     click here for more details in our book section.

Letter-to-the-Editor of the Manning River Times

Thursday, June 3, 1982.

Sir, What's in a name?

Not much, it would seem if one listens to those who see nothing much wrong with the naming of "Kate Kelly's Crossing".

How such a distortion of history came to be given an official imprint is beyond comprehension.  There never was a "Kate" Kelly of note in the Manning's past.  There is not one piece of documentary evidence to support the claim that Isabella Kelly, the lady in question, was ever called "Kate" during her lifetime.

However, I have found during my research along the Manning, that many rural and townsfolk in the fifties and sixties age bracket generally refer to her as "Kate".  Why?

They generally tell me, "Well, I've always caller her that".  They don't know why.  However, the pioneers who knew Miss Kelly, and their sons and daughters, had no doubts about the name.  It was the next generation that got it wrong.  "Kate" became common usage because hardly anyone but the history buffs could remember the lady's real name.  However, they all knew "Kate Kelly" thanks to Ned .  So, through bad habit, the Manning Kelly became "Kate" too.

The mistake must be corrected.  Officialdom must back down and re-name the crossing.

If the past is not treated with respect, our future will be decidedly poorer.

                        Yours etc

                           Jim Revitt.

 

Jim Revitt was born at Wingham and became an ABC broadcaster, specialising in the making of documentaries.  In the 1980s he produced three photographic books of Manning Valley history in a series called "The Good Old Days".

Kate Kelly, the sister of Ned Kelly, was born about fifty years after Isabella Kelly, and died in the Forbes Lagoon from an accidental drowning, aged thirty-six.  There is no record that she ever visited the North Coast of New South Wales.

And now, in 2006, twenty-four years after Jim's letter sparked a public debate on the issue, the name of the crossing still remains as "Kate Kelly's Crossing".  

At the time, several Councillors questioned whether it really mattered if the name of the crossing was "Kate Kelly" or "Isabella Kelly".  One wonders (well, not really) what their own reaction would have been if their own Christian name had been  incorrectly placed  (or even misspelled) on a plaque.

Brimbin is the only site in the Manning Valley which commemorates the memory of this truly remarkable pioneer - and her name is wrong!

The brochure, above, was printed when Brimbin was still under the control of the Lands Department.  In recent years the crossing has been transferred from the Lands Department to National Parks & Wildlife.  Since the change of control, there have been some murmurs that the name may change, but there has been no official announcement that a name change is even under consideration.

 The Article "Gunwoman of the Manning" from Smith's Weekly, 1928

(Click on the newspaper for the full story)

This is one of three articles about Isabella Mary Kelly that appeared in the Sydney newspaper/magazine Smith's Weekly during the 1920s.  

 

 

They were written by "The Man in the Mask", with readers assuming that, as no one knew his identity, he could write the true story without fear of retribution from relatives or others.  

 

 

The "Man in the Mask" was Gordon Bennett, owner of the Dungog Chronicle.  Bennett got much of his inspiration for his stories from the cases brought before the Dungog Magistrates and recorded in the Dungog Bench books.

 

 

The story is fiction, but note how the introductory paragraphs present it as a true story.  Modern readers would be much more skeptical, but in the 1920s readers generally accepted these articles as fact.  Further, later writers took these "factual" stories of Isabella Mary Kelly and added their own "improvements".

 

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